The Block: Early bitcoin contributors testify against Craig Wright at COPA trial
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wo key figures in Bitcoin’s creation took the stand in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) case against Craig Wright, an early Bitcoin developer who claims to be the pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Adam Back, pioneer of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus system, and early Bitcoin contributor Martti Malmi disputed claims from Wright’s testimony, according to a statement to the press shared with The Block. Back and Malmi, as witnesses for COPA, aim to show the court that Wright is not Nakamoto, thereby negating Wright’s claim to intellectual property ownership over Bitcoin.
In his witness statement, Back provided evidence from 2009 explaining B-Money to Nakamoto, contradicting Wright’s claim that he was influenced by the concept. B-Money is a proposal of a decentralized digital currency proposed by the computer scientist Wei Dai in 1998.
Malmi stated to the court that he “communicated with Satoshi, who I believe to be a different person to Dr. Wright.” Malmi’s statements also disputed Wright’s timeline of when the Finnish programmer first approached Satoshi and contradicted Wright’s knowledge of who co-founded the dark web marketplace Silk Road.”